#SCOLT19 Hot Seat Illumination

It wasn’t just that Paul Sandrock successfully flipped his hot seat session so WE were on the hot seat. It wasn’t just that he ever-so-gently structured the session so that it would be perfectly tailored to our precise needs by starting with Laura Terrill’s philosophy of leading with the “Why” and then the “How.” It was that this generous and wise BEING (who claims he’s “just a middle school teacher”) took something I thought I understood–Comprehensible Input–and added dimensions to it, SCULPTED my understanding in a way that not only completely revitalized it’s role in my classroom interactions, but ALSO laid a solid foundation for exactly what I was planning to do in class next week.

So below you can see my brain exploding in real time, tweet by tweet, but here’s the upshot of what I got from the session.

1. Input is EVERYTHING

It is SO much more than words. And that is but PART of why there is no one-to-one equivalency between languages. (My amiga Mara added later that even the smell from Starbucks is input contributing to meaning making and interpretation.) But truly, truly? A lot of how input is processed is dependent on interpreters’ background experiences and personal filters. Think about all of those completely subconscious perspectives we absorb constantly!

2. Comprehensibility is SO much more than input

So yeah, it’s important to provide written and oral texts that are truly comprehensible and to thoughtfully scaffold the interaction with those texts. But the missing link between that input and acquisition that really FEELS like acquisition is comprehensible INTERACTION, comprehensible contexts that allow students to make use of those ingrained filters and perspectives and background experience and apply the language in situations that are accessible and really, truly meaningful beyond esoteric academic exercise.

It goes back to my frustration at iFLT nearly 3 years ago–I was absorbing and absorbing and absorbing the Russian input, but I knew–KNEW–something was missing! I have often felt that the overflowing sponge or vessel analogy was flawed (and, yeah, theory has to be based on more than some teacher’s feeling, but, you know, MY filters), because language just ISN’T a liquid, and there are PLENTY of people who really could hold in the L2 FOREVER. Or, you know, just let it run all over the place like they’re little sieves incapable of containing language.

No, it is the follow-up after the input with scaffolded interaction that keeps comprehensibility active and, dare I day, productive. It’s not about forcing output but SUPPORTING it, just as we must with the input!

3. Placemats

I’ve been meaning to do these forever–or at least since Bethanie posted about them–and M. Sandrock just happened to share what will probably be the perfect complement to my plans to review our Peardeck progress in Agentes Secretos with our OWN hot seat style discussions.

So it is safe to say that the first day of #SCOLT19 left me totally sated with these fresh perspectives on my own practice and pedagogy. Saturday morning after the hot seat, though, is when I would be set afire.

To be continued…